If it weren't for places outside of the game (like this thread), I would have never known they exist (you never hear about it in the game).

I just don't understand the point of them. If people find it fun, that's fine. But one of the biggest purposes for an MMO, is to get a tangible reward, and progress your character. Challenge modes provide neither of that.

I think Blizzard is on to something with non-LFG Heroic scenarios. LFG should keep the same crappy blue, easy mode dungeons. And the "heroics", should be pre-made groups that were Cata launch or BC difficulty that provides epic loot. With this they can get rid of ridiculous challenge modes and scenarios.

Hit. They felt like progressing a decent heroic boss to get gold. Atleast at the start of the expansion, dunno now with all the gem slots on the items how much easier they've gotten. People asked for harder 5man content and now its there, can't wait to get more challengemode dungeons in the next expansion.
Only thing that is bad about them is that there pretty much isn't any point to do them again once you hit the gold other than getting better time and to get top times you need certain comp pretty much...
Balance wise I think they also did a goodjob, you can pretty much run any compo of melee/ranged and still do just fine.

However now, the majority of people that do them just buy them from service providers.

Seriously, go to a server like Illidan and observe the chat, there are so many foreign agencies and companies selling Gold, RBGs, Challenge Modes, Raiding Runs, etc.

MoP has spawned a huge number of companies selling all this crap and it over runs all the people trying to run legit groups. Hell, even streamers buy the Challenge Mode services and stream them being ran.

You see, Blizzard is STILL trying to appeal to people who want to hit "i" and solo the game and people who want that sense of the world and community back. You can't cater to two markets at once, you have to pick one or the other.

But not for the feature itself, Cm's are actually a lot of fun. It's just that they compete for gametime with a shitload of other stuff with actual tangible rewards - a lot of which has felt mandatory throughout mop.

Dailies for coins or CM? Dailies.
LFR for maybe some gear or CM? LFR.
Farm for mats or CM? Farming.
Rep grinding or CM? Rep grinding.

My guild is just now starting to look at these seriously, people simply havent had time to do them with all the other stuff that's needed to be gone through every week. I'd actually prefer it if they were even harder but not time trials. The leaderboard is a bit of a waste of space as well, like most competitive things if you are up there ranking it feels great - and no one else is interested. Seemingly unbeatable competition disincentivises a lot of people and it's irritating if that's due to class/spec.

I say miss, not because the content is bad, but because they are so inacessible. I've been trying to get into good challenge mode groups for ages now, but i haven't found anyone who does it outside of their own little group of friends. The proving grounds is an interesting contrast to this. Solo content that can offer some difficulty. I think they should add more content like that. Warlock green fire questline is also a good contrast. Challenge modes are cool, but they are so intimidating that nobody wants to get into them.

A huge hit! To me its the best new thing they added to the game for years. I love progress raiding and I think progressing CMs is as fun as progressing a good raid boss.

On my server there is always people in trade looking for people to do CMs and sites like openraid always have a lot of CM gold events and they always gets a lot of people signing. In my guild every week somebody asks in gchat if anyone is up for some CMs.

What to do if you find out that your GM is playing his ally alt? GANK HIM!

Honestly, I'd say they're a hit. The only way to complete them is to be genuinely skilled or have at least 4 people who know them so well that they've gotten exactly the right class/spec combination to make it doable with a carried fifth. If you've earned a gold in a guild run, you've shown that you're really, really good at the game. You have bragging rights and that's all "don't give casuals any purples, why blizz why" was ever about.

Originally Posted by 7seti

That's because people wanted a more challenging mode that 1. dropped useful gear and 2. wasn't a speed run. Challenge modes fill a niche, but they are not what people were asking for.

Which is why Heroic Scenarios were added and took that place. Pre-made only, rewards (if any) are higher than LFR by quite a bit but not quite raid gear and can't be facerolled by people in the lowest ilvl requirement range. Other than the terrible droprate, which is a bit manditory or else why wouldn't everyone everywhere run them constantly until they're above LFR level, they're actually rather decent.

I liked them. Approached them like heroic raiding when we had nothing to do during the first two weeks of the expansion after getting level capped.

Lots of room for improvement though. I felt like the leader boards for them are kind of pointless considering it takes a certain composition and some seriously shady tactics.

Feel like challenge modes could be expanded in the future to older raids as well. A reason to go back, maybe scaled to 10 players and some sense of difficulty returned to those raids. Purely for vanity, cosmetics and bragging rights though.

Yeah my guild didn't even run these really until we had 13/13H down to a 1 night farm, then just started doing them just for something to do outside our 1 raid night. 3 nights got 5 of us 9/9 gold with relative ease. Free mount/title and transmog set is nothing to complain about. Surprised the mount wasn't the reward from getting 9/9G since getting a transmog for doing all of them kinda seems like a joke.

I never found TBC style hard at all and I had to do all those stupid atunements to actually raid back then.

There was no urgency and hardly any mechanics behind the entirety of those instances. You handled packs in two ways. You brought excessive amount of CC and assisted the tank one by one in a tedious fashion killing them. Or you CCd what you could and kited some mobs while the others focused a mob one by one. It was less about difficulty and more about tediously planning who pulls what, what the kill order was and not pulling aggro off the tank or hitting a wrong mob.

It was difficult in it's own sense, but it certainly wasn't difficult from a mechanical stand point. Most of the difficulty as said was in core fundamentals of the game. CC, kiting and assisting.